How’s that for a headline? Instead, in the Daily Mail yesterday, we get Bulgarian girl, 11, gives birth to her daughter… on her wedding day.
You see, a miracle happened. Or at least abuse-disguising language happened:
Kordeza – who fell pregnant within two weeks of her 11th birthday – spent the night in hospital with Violeta and then headed back to church for her wedding with 19-year-old Jeliazko Dimitrov.
Falling pregnant. Is that like falling asleep? Falling sick? Or could there be an actual male adult involved in the process?
Add another abuse-disguising term: “couple”.
The couple met when Jeliazko rescued Kordeza from bullies in the playground.
Note to all media: Stop referring to abused children and the adults who abuse them as “couples”.
Round off the article by letting the abuser spout some responsibility-denying, self-justification:
He added: ‘I was walking past the school when I saw some boys mocking her and I told them to leave her alone.
‘Then she arranged to meet me and asked me out on our first date. I thought she was 15. She didn’t tell me she was 11.’
Apparently, he didn’t find out she wasn’t 15 in the entire week it took to get her pregnant.
Nice one, Daily Mail; you hit all the child-blaming, rape-denying targets!
“I thought she was 15”
“Apparently, he didn’t find out she wasn’t 15 in the entire week it took to get her pregnant.”
Apparently, he didn’t find out that 15 is still below the age of consent, either.
BTW, not that it’s directly relevant, but have you seen the Security and Financial Empowerment (SAFE) Act that is working its way through the US Senate? If passed, it would introduce a bunch of common-sense initiatives there, including (wait for it)…making it illegal for health insurers to consider domestic abuse a “pre-existing condition”. Talk about victim-blaming.
Well, you see, he thinks he’s being clever. The article states that the age of consent in Bulgaria is 14. If he said “I thought she was 14”, people might think he was a borderline case preying on girls just at the age of consent. By saying “I thought she was 15”, he’s hoping people will think that he’s just a regular guy who dates younger women.
Re SAFE: That is good news for American women. Of course to us here in the UK, the US health care system seems completely bizarre.
“The article states that the age of consent in Bulgaria is 14.”
Oops, yeah missed the last line.
“Re SAFE: That is good news for American women. Of course to us here in the UK, the US health care system seems completely bizarre.”
Yes, it’s not a law that would be directly applicable in the UK, although that’s not the only thing it would introduce. It would also make it illegal to discriminate against survivors of domestic abuse in employment, require employers to make reasonable security adjustments at survivors’ request if they have experienced violence or have been threatened with violence, requires employers to give survivors time off work to seek legal advice and attend court, and sets up a short-term one-off benefit for survivors in a certain need bracket to prevent homelessness.
Most of those are already rights that people have in the UK, but some would make a lot of sense to introduce.
Interesting, btw, that the article describes him as having “rescued” her from bullies, like she had no agency in that situation.
The media routinely hides the sex of males who commit violence against women and girls. All too often I wonder to myself how ‘rape and/or sexual violence’ came to be a subject wherein the reader reads a ‘woman/girl was raped’ which of course implies ‘rape’ did this to to woman/girl not a male. I never read headlines saying ‘male accused of raping woman/girl’ or ‘male(s) raped woman/girl.’
See how easy it is to write a short headline with first words stating sex of male perpetator.
@Abi: I sure hope SAFE passes. I’m sure there are individual states where some of these protections apply, but it’s important to have federal laws in effect. I hope the Democrats use their majority to see this passed.
@Jennifer: It would be interesting to see what effect it would have if the news reported all stories with the subject always clearly present: not ‘Woman assaulted in nightclub’ but ‘Man assaults woman in nightclub’.
Certainly with the recession there were a number of articles headlines of the form “recession causes increase in domestic violence”, which not only suggests that the violence happens on its own as in the case Jennifer describes, or in the case the in the post, but invokes the “men can’t help it” myth — apparently, it was the fault of the recession.